WASHINGTON, DC – The Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) launched a $1.5 million ad buy on Friday calling on Senate Democrats to stop bullying President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees over their religious faith. Federal judges will be a top issue over the next two years for the 2020 election.
President Trump broke records during his first two years in office, confirming 85 federal judges. In addition to two Supreme Court appointments, this number includes 30 judges to the U.S. courts of appeals, leaving in the dust the previous record of 23.
However, there are a record number of judicial vacancies – almost 100 – providing the president and Senate Republicans with a historic opportunity to reshape the third branch of government as one of President Trump’s greatest accomplishments going into 2020.
JCN’s ad campaign is jumpstarting that process, now that Republicans have a working majority in the Senate for the first time since President Trump took office. Senate Democrats seem committed to continuing their blind opposition to the president’s judicial nominees.
“Democrats are taking their obstruction to disgraceful new lows,” declares the narrator — showing images of Democrat Sens. Chuck Schumer (NY), Dianne Feinstein (CA), Patrick Leahy (VT), and likely presidential candidate Kamala Harris (CA) — “shamefully bullying nominees, attacking them just because of their faith.”
Video during these words shows Feinstein and Dick Durbin (D-IL) going after Judge Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation hearing for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Feinstein infamously told Barrett in Yoda-ish prose, “The dogma lives loudly in you,” a reference to Barrett’s being a faithful Catholic committed to the teachings of her church. (As a Roman Catholic, Barrett is hardly an adherent of a marginal faith. There are roughly 70 million Catholics in the United States.)
The ad even quotes Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, who said these anti-Catholic statements “foment bigotry, fears and suspicions.” Gabbard was responding to attacks from her fellow Hawaii colleague, Sen. Mazie Hirono, and Harris, for signaling that they would vote against Brian Buesher’s nomination to be a federal trial judge because Buescher is a member of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic charity organization.
The Religious Test Clause of Article VI of the Constitution commands that no person can be disqualified from federal service because of that person’s religious faith.
The ad urges viewers: “Tell your senator. Stand up to the bullying. Confirm the judges.”
“Because of Democrats’ obstruction of judicial nominees we now have significantly more vacancies than when President Trump took office,” JCN Chief Counsel Carrie Severino said in a statement accompanying the ad’s release. “Sen. McConnell has restated his commitment to filling the vacancies and has maintained that this is a Senate priority.”
“It’s time for Democrats to end the bullying and smear campaigns and confirm the judges,” Severino concluded.
Ken Klukowski is senior legal editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski.
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